Simmons Hall

After our tour the next logical stop was Simmons Hall, because it’s the most famous dorm at MIT and none of us had seen it up close. Simmons has a very unique outer appearance, often being described as a space sponge. It has hundreds of little windows all over the building, giving the appearance of being over a twenty foot building, but in actuality each floor is three windows high. This means that each dorm room has 9 windows, 3x3. The architecture is really weird/cool, with curveey walls and spiral staircases, modular chairs, and lit benches. Here’s a wall that we found in the lobby area:

Also, it has some PRETTY CRAZY WALLS!!! As you walk along you notice that the walls are wooden, but then if you lean against them they move! THE WALLS ARE ON HINGES! Check out this chunk of wall that when opened reveals an office:

I made a video of us opening another much bigger wall. We were VERY excited, it was amazing.

Simmons had, what I like to call, a “chill center” in their lobby as well. A chill center is essentially an area with chairs, tv’s, and and stuff that helps you relax. The lobby chill center had

A flatscreen tv

a skeeball machine

a ping-pong table (Yuki not included)

and a kitchen

One of the windows, we noticed, had a flare for video games, sporting its best rendition of Space Invaders.

I’ve left the best part of the lobby chill center for last. As we walked down the hall we saw a room called the “Meditation Room.” Wondering what a Meditation Room was, we opened the door to check inside. IT WAS A BALL PIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG! We were even more excited about this than the moving walls! We all went in and started jumping around, throwing balls, juggling, climbing walls, and taking pictures. Here are some of those pics:

Then everybody discovered a new game, called “Let’s bury Snively with balls!”

Oh, and did I mention that the windows in the ball pit were blue?

Overall, the ball pit is a huge incentive to live in Simmons.

Thus concludes our initial impressions of Simmons before our next adventure. I give it two giant thumbs up!